Tuesday, July 10, 2018

The basement and the God upstairs

Years ago I read some book by Francis Schaeffer. I can't remember the title but I was fresh out of seminary wondering what to do with my life. In that book, Schaeffer had described people in this house and God was supposed to be on the roof. In today's terms, we would see the people in a basement or ground floor and God on the first floor. It can also be said that we are in some machine and God is outside the machine.

Pre-modern people believed that people could escape the ground floor and go up to the first floor where God is. Either that or God could come to the ground floor and bring us up. But they believed in God and could have some kind of access to him.

Modern people believed that God was upstairs but that we couldn't get to him and he wasn't going to try to get to us. The underlings in the basement had to make a utopia based on that belief.

Post-modern people don't believe in anything outside the basement. This ground floor is all there is. Even if there is a staircase or elevator, they've blocked it up and can't get upstairs and God can't get to us.

I read that book and wrote a song that I hope to upload again someday called "God in the Machine."

Last week I read an article entitled, "When Ground Floor Projects Are Pushed One Floor Up." It is based on the same house/machine assumption. Stephen McAlpine is looking at the sexual revolution. Whether its the ability to have lots of heterosexual sex without restraints, or the LGBT agenda, or abortion rights, or the wish to have children without having sex, it has all become a religion. And it confirms my beliefs that if there is no God upstairs, then there is nothing else to live for. We must live for our pleasures and our whims because it is all we have. And its a poor substitute for the perfect and holy God, so it must get wilder and wilder as we get bored with it.

And it makes me thing of the women at the pregnancy center that I volunteer for and the one I volunteered for in the past. They all are in sexual relationships outside of marriage and having children but at the same time they think that they are Christians. They think they can serve both God and the sexual culture. But we must find a loving way to tell them that they cannot do so. Either you believe that there's a God outside the machine who you must serve or your go against what he has revealed in Scripture and have unmarital sex which leads to pregnancies, some pregnancies to abortions, and all of it to broken relationships and struggling to make ends meet.

Is it judgmental for me to say all this? Maybe. I know I'm not perfect either and am also struggling to make ends meet. But the main thing that kept me from having sex before I got married to Tim was my belief in God and that he has commanded to not commit adultery. In fact, the main thing that kept me from pursuing same-sex relations is my belief in God and that he has made marriage and sex to be between a man and a woman with no room for questions. And I'm in a healthy relationship now that is not entangled by previous relational baggage.

And I have had many people say, "well, 'adultery' simply means that you can't have sex with someone other than the one you are married to, but if you are both unmarried than you are fine." But if you are unmarried and having sex and then break up and marry someone else, then you've already cheated on your spouse.

And I've heard just about every argument for people trying to reconcile Christianity with LGBT identity. "God made me this way." "That was only a cultural command." Look, from creation, God made man male and female (binary) and commanded them to get married and have children. He commanded sex within a male and female marriage and forbid it outside that context. And he would not forbid you to do something and then make it impossible for you to carry that out. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says he will always provide a way out for you if you are tempted. I can understand having strong emotions for someone, but that is not a call to be in a romantic relationship with them. It could just simply be a call to a really good friendship. People simply do not know how to be friends anymore because they live in a basement, have blocked up the stairs to the first floor, and have found no substitute for God other than this meaningless thing called sex. And there is no way out of this machine until God breaks in and rescues you.

And he did that by sending Jesus to die for your sins. There was no way to approach this holy God and live because you would die with your sins. But God send his Son to die for your sins. Jesus also lived the only perfect life and credits it to all who will believe in him. It is only that way you can come upstairs and meet your God. Will you choose today between sexual perversion and serving Jesus? You can't serve both.

About Me

I served as a youth pastor for 3 years. Then I got married to Tim and now attend a different church. I play guitar in their chapel service and am involved in children's ministry and work at their school. I'm Reformed and conservative.